Wong Up For Rhodes Scholarship
11/17/17 | Women's Soccer, @GoDucksMoseley
Senior UO soccer player and biochemistry major Caitlyn Wong is in Seattle this weekend interviewing to become the 20th Rhodes Scholar from the University of Oregon.
After five years of excelling in the classroom as a biochemistry major, while contributing the last four seasons with the Oregon soccer team, Caitlyn Wong's future seems limitless.
As of Saturday night, the University of Oregon senior may have some direction – eastward, across the Atlantic Ocean, to the University of Oxford. Wong is in Seattle to interview for the Rhodes Scholarship, which is awarded annually to 32 American college students, two from each of 16 regions.
Wong hopes to become the 20th Rhodes Scholar from the University of Oregon. The university was represented in the very first class of Americans invited to study at Oxford as Rhodes Scholars, in 1904, and was again most recently in 2007, went Andrew Shipley was awarded the scholarship.
"Just getting to this point has been really rewarding in itself, and really humbling," Wong said Friday morning. "I'm going into the interview process open-minded. I've done all the preparation I can. It would be an amazing opportunity."
The interview process began with a luncheon Friday, attended by all the regional applicants and the panelists who will consider them, to be followed by a formal interview either later Friday or early Saturday. The two regional Rhodes Scholars will be announced Saturday night.
Wong described Friday's luncheon as "your first chance to get to know everyone, and put your story out there." In Wong's case, there's quite the story to tell.
A native of Sunnyvale, Calif., Wong enrolled at Oregon and joined the soccer team in 2013. She redshirted that season to rehab a knee injury, played in 2014 and then injured her other knee in the spring of 2015. Undeterred, Wong returned to action just five months removed from surgery, in the fall of 2015, and she completed her collegiate career this fall despite two more knee surgeries in the last two years.
Next week, Wong will find out if she has been named first-team Pac-12 all-academic for the fourth season in a row. She's juggled playing soccer with a sterling academic career, keeping her GPA around – and sometimes above – 4.0 throughout the last four years while studying biochemistry.
This past spring, Wong combined her interests in medicine and soccer by organizing a benefit tournament for the St. Baldrick's Foundation for children's cancer research. That spurred the idea of a career in pediatric oncology, Wong said.
Her Rhodes Scholarship application proposed combining two one-year master's programs at Oxford toward that end. Wong proposed studying both radiation biology and neuroscience.
"I'm very interested in both, yet have only taken limited courses as an undergraduate," she said. "I want to get more education in the subjects, and research experience. It would really allow me to get a better feel for both subjects, and more experience, before I apply to medical school."
Rhodes Scholars are selected based on academics, character, "a commitment to others and to the common good," and for the potential to become a leader in one's chosen field. Wong has demonstrated excellence in all four, and hopes to be a leader professionally one day, too.
"I know I want to work with childhood cancers," she said. "But I want to do more than just act as a doctor. I want to help push for more funding, and work on fostering collaboration among different fields."
During her five years at Oregon, Wong tailored her course of study and extracurricular activities toward that end. This weekend, her future could gain a whole new level of focus, via the Rhodes Scholarship interview process.
